Social Media: A Marketing Tool for Higher Ed Professionals

by Kari Ward

The UF Online Business Program is preparing to enter the world of social media to market our program to current and prospective students.  To ready ourselves for this leap--and it’s a giant leap for Gen Xer’s like myself and Jill Lingard--we attended Academic Impression’s “Social Media Strategy for Higher Education:  Beyond the Basics” conference in Boston, Mass. this past March.   As the title suggests, the focus was not to teach student affairs staff the mechanics of how to use social media, but rather to teach us the proper approach to using social media.

Jill and Kari visit Boston

The central messages of the conference were that those in higher ed need to develop strategic plans for using social media and that social media should be viewed as a marketing tool, not as just another means for disseminating information.  Our presenters explained that real life businesses use social media to sell their brands, images that have been carefully crafted to appeal to customers’ interests, needs, and values.  The goal of these companies is not simply to advertise, but to actively engage and involve customers with their product.  Many businesses use Facebook to accomplish this.  They create a Facebook page, ask customers to “Like” them, and then make posts asking customers to share their opinions and personal experiences with the product.  This is old fashioned word-of-mouth advertising plain and simple, but with added advantages.  Today's companies can interact with customers from a distance, prompt them to discuss their product, and then chime in and "manage" the conversation.

And so, the conference presenters argued, higher ed professionals need to conduct themselves more like businesses.  We need to use social media strategically--to develop marketing plans with measurable outcomes, to create and sell a brand, and to get students talking about our product.  And just what is our product?  It’s what we advisors are forever trying to sell--the valuable advice, services, and programs we provide to our students.  So if you or your advising or student affairs office wants to meet students where they’re at—on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn—and you want to use social media purposefully and effectively to achieve an intended outcome, here are the main "take aways" from the expert presenters who spoke at the conference:

• People often view social media as a form of free advertising, but that’s a fallacy.  If you’re doing it right, social media is pretty labor intensive.  It requires significant planning and forethought; writing, filming, researching, editing, collecting, and organizing content; analyzing activity on your site to see if you’re meeting intended goals; not to mention the time it takes to manage, monitor, and post to your sites.  When considering social media use, you might ask yourself the following questions:  What are my goals?  How committed am I to maintaining my site?  How many hours per week can I dedicate to social media?  Who can help me with content and site management?  And is this the most effective use of my time?

• When creating your own academic advising brand, you’ll have to decide on the image you want to portray.  To help figure this out, you might ask yourself "What qualities are my students looking for in an advisor?  What kind of information do they want from me?  What are my values and how can I convey them?  What unique skills do I have?  How do I want my students to perceive me?”  Ponder your answers and then think about how you can convey those ideas to your students.  (For more information on how to create your own personal brand, see this wikiHow page.) 

• When you think about developing a brand, keep in mind that a brand is “a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or organization” and that your brand is not what you say it is.  It’s what your customers say it is.  So if you have a Facebook page, your objective should be to prompt students to share their thoughts about your services instead of you directly telling students how valuable your services are.

• Once you’ve defined your brand, you need to identify your audience.  Where are they?  Do they use Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, or some other social media site?  Who are they?  Current or prospective students?  Natives or transfers?  Or all of the above?  If the latter, how will you tailor your posts to make them relevant to these different populations?  What are they interested in?  Your students’ major will have direct bearing on the content of your posts.

• Which brings me to the subject of content.  How will you create content?  To insure your posts are timely and relevant, you could start by creating a calendar that features advising- or career-related dates and events, such as advance registration or Career Showcase.  Ideas for content that you can create yourself include photos of student organization events, orientation, and commencement; internship or job announcements that cross your desk; or homemade videos featuring you, your students, and their professors.  Of course, you don’t have to create all of your own content.  You can use outside sources, like event calendars; news items and press releases; annual reports; research stories; websites; published rankings; alumni profiles; or workshop announcements from UF, the CRC, or CLAS websites.  Just make sure you add value to outside content by explaining its relevance and relating it to your students’ interests and needs.

• When thinking about content, you’ll want to create posts that are interactive (in other words, posts that ask questions and inspire students to comment), visual (use lots of graphics, pictures, and videos), current, relevant, useful, and consistent.  Content that is overly repetitive, regurgitated, understood by only a limited audience, out of context, poorly targeted, and inconsistent won’t help you build a following among your students.  Having an interactive approach is especially important.  Instead of posting a basic reminder about advance registration, for example, you can generate conversation about advance registration by asking your students whether they have registered for any interesting electives next semester.  When creating posts, make your tone personal and genuine and demonstrate care and interest by responding promptly to students’ posts.  

• Last but not least, create a set of tangible goals and learn how to measure them.  For example, you could determine the number of people you want to RSVP to an event, visit your website, or apply to your program.  Then you can measure your desired outcome using Google Analytics.  Finally, and perhaps most importantly, be sure to report your findings to your boss so that you can justify the amount of time you’re spending on Facebook! :)